The invention relates to a process and an apparatus for automatically forming so-called optical shuffles. These are special cables based on optical fibers. These can be formed both of multi-mode fibers and of single-mode fibers. The fiber materials utilized are glasses of an extremely wide range of compositions, and also plastics, so-called plastic optical fibers (POF). The choice depends on the application.
The starting material considered is individual fibers, and also may include fiber ribbons.
The fibers are usually arranged in a manual process in such a way that, from an arrangement of a plurality of bundles of fibers (input side), a plurality of bundles of fibers (output side) with a very complex channel organization is produced by reorganizing the fibers. Depending on the application, an extremely wide range of configurations of channel organizations can be selected, for example for switches, for crossover connections and so on.
In the processes known hitherto, following the manual organization, both the input lines and the output lines are fixed in a connecting step to form parallel cables. The fixing serves for simplified assembly, for example of commercially available plugs. In this case, typically six to twelve fibers are combined in a row on the input side and on the output side.
One drawback with previous production is the extremely high involvement of personnel. This means high costs. A further drawback of the methods and apparatuses known hitherto is the inadequacy of the fabrication and also the lack of accuracy and the insufficient dimensional stability of the products produced.